20 most searched universities by Google users

Search engine patterns coincide with bullish industry forecast: A growing number of Google users are getting interested in online education, this complements well with institutions' growing investments on eLearning products

Google released its most popular searches for people around the world looking for universities. Base on the results, there is a strong interest in online courses, rather than traditional campus-based universities.

Most of the universities in the list have either pioneered in online education or have many online courses on offer. Among them is the Massachusetts Institute of Technology which is one of the leaders in online education. Also in the list are Open University and Liberty University that offer hundreds of online courses at the associate, bachelor's, master's, education specialist and doctoral levels.

In 2011, the most searched-for universities in the UK, apart from the Open University, were conventional campus-based institutions, headed by Oxford and Cambridge. By 2014, all of these UK campus universities had been overtaken by Coursera, the US-based provider of online courses. Other MOOC providers, such as edX and FutureLearn, had also emerged as bigger than many traditional UK universities.

Furthermore, half of the universities in the Google list are based in the United States. Coincidently, the United States is the world's largest market for self-paced eLearning products.

Last year, the market for self-paced eLearning products was estimated at USD42.7 billion, and is projected to reach USD53 billion by 2018, according to US-based Ambient Insight. Although the US leads in revenues,  experts believe that Asia is a fast-growing market with revenues projected to reach USD12.1 billion in 2018, up from USD7.9 billion in 2013.

Seven out of the top 10 countries with the highest eLearning growth rates in the world are in Asia – Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, Indonesia, Nepal and Pakistan – with growth in these countries above 30%, the report said. Malaysia alone has a growth rate at 43.7%.

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